Kohl

While Republican warfare shifts to South Carolina, Democrats elsewhere are flaunting unity. In the Wisconsin Senate race, which shaping up to be a major contest, Sen. Herb Kohl has formally endorsed the presumptive nominee, Rep. Tammy Baldwin, to take his place. The seven-term congresswoman “has served our state and our country with conviction, compassion and common sense, and she will be an excellent senator who will make Wisconsin proud," Kohl, who is retiring after decades in office, said in a statement.

Retail sales cooled in July amid a wave of renewed economic worries, but the nation's merchants still managed to post a decent month. Investors, however, seemed unimpressed as retail stocks fell on a dismal day for the stock market. Major chain stores reported a 4.4% rise in sales compared with the same month last year, according to Thomson Reuters' tally of 25 companies. Sales were in line with Wall Street expectations and were helped by the start of back-to-school season, hot weather and big discounts.

Question: I am a shareholder of Kohl's Corp. and want to know if I can expect better performance from the stock. Answer: The reality for the nation's department stores and their investors in 2011 is that high cotton prices are raising the cost of apparel and high gasoline prices are constricting shopper budgets. Shares of Kohl's (KSS) were down 7.5% this year through Friday. But the company's first-quarter earnings were up 6% compared with the previous year, even though it was hampered by markdowns and weak demand for spring merchandise.

Wisconsin Sen. Herb Kohl announced that he will retire at the end of his current term, adding to Democratic woes in the party's effort to maintain control of the Senate. The decision by Kohl, 76, had been rumored for months. He had not raised much for a 2012 campaign, though he could have tapped his personal wealth from his family's department store chain. "I've always believed that it's better to leave a job a little too early than a little too late. And that's how I feel today," he said in Milwaukee.

Wisconsin Sen. Herb Kohl will announce on Friday that he will retire at the end of his current term, adding to Democratic woes in the effort to maintain control of the Senate. FOR THE RECORD: Corrected at 9:41 a.m. May 13: The caption on an earlier version of this post misspelled the name of Sen. Kohl as Kohn. The decision by Kohl, 76, had been rumored for months. He had not raised much for a 2012 campaign, though he could have tapped his personal wealth that comes from the family's eponymous department store chain.

After scaling back on temporary holiday workers during the recession, many retailers are aggressively ramping up their seasonal hiring plans, giving job seekers a glimmer of hope and lifting optimism for a healthy Christmas. Toys R Us Inc. is hiring 45,000 holiday employees, a nearly 30% increase compared with last year; Kohl's Corp. is hiring 20% more workers; and Brookstone Inc. is adding 36% more. Department store giants Macy's Inc. and JCPenney Co. said they were slightly increasing their holiday hiring numbers to meet demand.

On Saturday, Helmut Kohl, the "chancellor of German unity," will turn 80. To mark the occasion, Chancellor Angela Merkel and many others in Germany will deliver nice tributes to old King Kohl; yet his country's current approach to Europe, and especially to the embattled Eurozone, risks dismantling his European legacy. If you ask why the European project is faltering today, one of the main reasons is that the German motor has stalled. And if you ask why, the short answer is because Germany has become a "normal" nation, like France and Britain.

Kohl's Corp., the mid-priced department store chain that has been aggressively grabbing market share, and apparel retailer Gap Inc., which is in the midst of a turnaround, both reported strong sales as well as double-digit profit gains for the fourth quarter. For the three months that ended Jan. 30, Kohl's profit increased 28% to $431 million, or $1.40 a share, compared with $336 million, or $1.10, in the year-earlier quarter, the company said Thursday. Total sales increased 8.5% to $5.7 billion, and sales at stores open at least a year -- known as same-store sales and considered an important measure of a retailer's health -- increased 4.5%.

Kohl's Corp. gambled big when it opened 30 new California stores last year amid one of the worst retail environments in decades. But in just a few months, the stores have turned out promising initial results -- attracting many first-time Kohl's customers and boosting business at the department store chain's existing locations. Although the new stores increased the number of Kohl's locations in California by one-third, statewide sales have grown more than 40% year over year since the Sept.

Three major retailers -- a discounter, a mid-priced department store and an upscale chain -- said their profits were up in the fiscal third quarter, showing significant improvement over last year's dismal fall season. But sales figures at Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Kohl's Corp. and Nordstrom Inc. indicated that consumers were still not ready to spend freely, causing continued concern about the holiday season. Although the results beat company expectations, executives at all three chains conceded that they have a tough selling period ahead.